Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 January 1908
CountryFrance
responsible humans human-beings
Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
talking judgment too-short
I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.
taken home house
The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.
memories waiting racing
My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.
dream women motherhood
The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
hard-times today existentialism
Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
important odd-things diaries
What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.
philosophy real ignorance
Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.
tasks cleaning made
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
helping-others people humanity
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.
fate civilization males
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.
heart men deterioration
The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.
moral
To be moral is to discover fundamentally ones own being.
body world projects
The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project